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Were Shakespeare and Bacon Acquainted?
If we are to believe in the existence of the cipher, it follows as a matter of course that Bacon and Shakespeare were acquainted. Nothing is more probable. Bacon was at Court during the whole time that Shakespeare’s plays were presented there. Bacon must at one period have been acquainted with Shakespeare’s patron, Lord Southampton, who was the bosom friend of Bacon’s patron, the Earl of Essex. Bacon was certainly in touch with Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s friend and co-worker. It is scarcely conceivable that the two most prominent figures in the literary world of the day should have been unknown to one another, although there is no authentic evidence to show that they were. In Shakespeare’s True Life (1890), Major James Walter publishes an illustration of Bacon’s house at St. Margaret’s, Richmond, “where Shakespeare was a frequent visitor.” “Twickenham,” says the writer, “is a main connecting link with what is known of Shakespeare’s visits to the neighbourhood; doubly interesting as clearly indicating his intimacy with Bacon, then living at his house, only a short distance on the other side of St. Margaret’s, in Twickenham Park.” Again, “It was just shortly before this plague fright, Shakespeare and Bacon had been jointly engaged in getting up one or more of his plays in Gray’s Inn, and it comes with the saying they should be frequently together in the eminently charming retreat just acquired by Bacon at the munificent hand of Elizabeth’s Favourite (the Earl of Essex).” “Catholic tradition,” the same authority assures us, “asserts that Bacon wrote the first portion of his great essays under the cedars of Twickenham Park; others go further, and say our information is that Shakespeare and Bacon had a special fondness for the two old cedars, and spent much time on occasions of Shakespeare’s visiting and resting with his friend at Twickenham, in reading and converse under the shade of these widespreading venerable trees.” In another part of the same book we read: “Some families, whose past histories should afford information bearing on Shakespeare’s life, assert that he met Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh on more than one occasion at Richmond, and that Bacon was in the habit of receiving them together at his St. Margaret’s home.”
Interesting as are these details, they are, it will be observed, quite unsupported. What the Major says is, unfortunately, “not evidence.” If Major Walter had given us chapter and verse for all this information, we might have verified his evidence for ourselves, but “Catholic tradition” and the unnamed “families with past histories,” and the “others” are too vague to pin one’s faith to. We may, however, assume that Shakespeare was not unknown to Bacon, that they met when Shakespeare was appearing at Gray’s Inn; and it is quite possible, if not probable, that Shakespeare consulted Bacon on the legal references and similes that we find in the Plays.
Bacon, although disloyal, and capable of shameless ingratitude towards his benefactors, had the love of his secretary Rawley, and the warm esteem of such men as Ben Jonson, Boëner, and Toby Matthew. Abbott, who is fully awake to his many faults, notes this curious inconsistency in his nature, and explains it in the conclusion that “whenever he found men naturally and willingly depending on him, and co-operating with him … his natural and general benevolence found full play.” If we accept this explanation, and it would appear to be the correct solution of his enigmatic character, we can readily understand that Bacon, in a patronising, but good-hearted way, would extend no little favour to a man of Shakespeare’s position and reputation. Shakespeare would be familiar with Bacon’s works, he may even have had the run of Bacon’s library in Gray’s Inn – an assumption of their intimacy, which, if supported by documentary evidence, would establish the theory that the poet used the philosopher as his model for Polonius. Bacon, the great philosopher, and the influential politician, would certainly have “the tribute of the supple knee” of all aspirants to literary fame. Authors would be proud to attract his notice, publishers would be flattered to allow him to glance through the proofs of any books that they were issuing. It is quite natural to suppose that if Shakespeare was known to Bacon, Heming and Condell would have been aware of the fact, and an offer to render them some assistance in publishing the First Folio would have been accepted with alacrity. Such an offer may have been made through Rawley, his faithful secretary; it might have come direct from Bacon to the publishers. How he obtained command of the proofs it is impossible to conjecture with any confidence, but if it is proved that the cipher exists in the Folio, and the other works mentioned – and I am satisfied to believe that it does, until a properly constituted committee reports that it is non-existent – it will be evident that somebody must have overcome the difficulties that the task presented. The law at that time recognised no natural right in an author to the creation of his brain, and the full owner of a MS. copy of any literary composition was entitled to reproduce it, or to treat it as he pleased, without reference to the author’s wishes. Thomas Thorpe, and the other pirates of the period, were always on the look-out for written copies of plays and poems for publication in this manner. All Shakespeare’s plays that appeared in print were issued without his authority, and, in several instances, against his expressed wish. How did Thorpe and his tribe obtain possession of the manuscripts of King Lear, Henry V., Pericles, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, and the rest of the sixteen plays which were in print at the date of the author’s death? If we knew for certain that Shakespeare and Bacon were on terms of intimacy, it would be a justifiable conjecture to suppose that the latter might have had a hand in the business, but if the existence of the cipher in these pirated quartos is verified, we may be quite sure that Bacon was the publishers’ accessory in securing the MSS. for publication.
It is, however, more difficult to satisfactorily explain the claim of Bacon to the authorship of the Anatomy of Melancholy. The first edition, in quarto form, was published in 1621; the cipher appears in the folio that was issued in 1628. In the preface to this edition, the author announces that he will make no more changes in his work: “I will not hereafter add, alter, or retract; I have done.” What do we gather from that, Mrs. Gallup may ask? – surely that Bacon felt his strength failing when he wrote those words; he certainly did not live to see the book through the press. But the fact remains that four more editions were published within Burton’s lifetime, each with successive alterations and additions. The final form of the book was the sixth edition (1651–52), printed from an annotated copy given just before Burton’s death to the publisher, Henry Cripps, who gained, Anthony à Wood tells us, great profits out of the book. This is one of the points upon which we shall hope to hear from Mrs. Gallup.
In this 1628 folio of the Anatomy of Melancholy, Mrs. Gallup has deciphered some ninety pages of a partial translation of Homer’s Iliad. But on comparing this translation with that of Alexander Pope, written about a century later, it becomes clear that it is not taken from the original Greek of Homer, but is, in fact, a prose rendering of Pope’s version. But Mrs. Gallup in a letter to the Times, which appears as these pages are going through the press, declares that an examination of six different English translations of the Iliad, and one Latin, shows her such substantial accord that either of them could be called with equal justice a paraphrase of Pope, or that Pope had copied from the others.
In Conclusion
Three of the main arguments which Baconians urge against the claims of Shakespeare to the authorship of the Plays are, firstly, that Shakespeare left no books; secondly, that only five of his signatures have come down to us; and, thirdly, that he makes no reference to his plays in his Will. When we come to investigate these objections, it may be said, without hesitation, that they do not amount to a row of pins. There isn’t a rag of evidence, to employ Mr. Sinnett’s phrase, to show that he left no books, it is quite certain that he left as much manuscript as Peele or Marlowe or any of the dramatists of his period, and it would have been something more than extraordinary if he had made any reference to copyrights which he did not possess. The professional playwrights of the period sold their plays outright to one or other of the acting companies, and they retained no legal interest in them after the manuscript had passed into the hands of the theatrical manager. When Shakespeare had disposed of his dramas, he washed his hands of them, so to speak, and not a single play of the sixteen that were published during his lifetime was issued under his supervision. They belonged to the theatre for which they were written. Shakespeare was only conforming to the general custom in this matter in betraying no interest in work which did not belong to him. He was consistently and characteristically indifferent as to what became of his plays, and in this he forms a striking contrast to Bacon, who had a mania for preserving and publishing every particle of his writings. In Shakespeare, this neglect, if surprising, is at least consistent; in Bacon it is too antagonistic to what is known of his idiosyncracies to be entertained for a single moment. Bacon must have realised that his versification of the Psalms was of less merit than the poetry in the plays. Yet he carefully superintended the publication of the Psalms, in the same year in which they were written, and kept no copies of such plays as The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen, Measure for Measure, Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, All’s Well, Twelfth Night, Winter’s Tale, Henry VI., Henry VIII., Coriolanus, Timon, Julius Cæsar, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline. These works of “supreme literary interest” were rescued from the dust-bin of the theatres, by the energy and affection of two of Shakespeare’s brother actors, what time Bacon was translating his philosophical works into Latin, and publishing the Psalms.
In the foregoing pages, Bacon’s character, and the incidents in his life have, it may be objected, been dealt with in a harsh and unsympathetic manner. Yet the facts set down are matters of history, and I claim for the comments, and the conclusions derived therefrom, that they are neither misleading nor exaggerated. It has been my endeavour to show that, while all that we know of Bacon’s private life and his public career – the evidence of his deeds, his sentiments, his prose, and his verse – prove him to have been a man incapable of conceiving the poetry of the Plays, there is nothing in the life of Shakespeare, when freed of the miserable misrepresentations and baseless accusations introduced by his traducers, which makes it difficult for us to regard him as the rightful author. One thing we must recognise in the writer of the greatest poetry of all times – his genius. We cannot argue that Shakespeare had genius – and, therefore, he wrote the plays – but we may transpose the argument and declare that Shakespeare wrote the plays, and therefore he had genius. But, cries the Baconian, Bacon also possessed genius. The fact is incontrovertible. His genius inspired him to draw up the scheme of his Magna Instauratio, to write his Essays, to invent a new philosophy, and a most ingenious cipher, but it did not prevent him from composing some miserably poor verses or enable him to discern the singular absence of merit in his metrical effusions. There is not a single “literary” argument of the hundreds put forward in support of Bacon’s claims to the authorship of the Plays which has validity, or even plausibility, to recommend it. There is not a single argument of the hundreds that have been advanced to deprive Shakespeare of his mantle which can stand the test of investigation. Carlyle declared Bacon to be as incapable of writing Hamlet as of making this planet. Spedding, who devoted thirty years of his life to the study of Bacon, emphatically asserts that, “if there were any reason for supposing that somebody else was the real author (of Shakespeare), I think I am in a condition to say that, whoever it was, it was not Bacon.” We know that Shakespeare put the plays on the stage, and acted in them, and that his intimate friends, his fellow actors, and the public, believed him to be the writer. We know, too, that Bacon had a distaste, if not a contempt, for the stage; that his lifelong complaint was his inability to secure time for his philosophic studies. To sum up in a sentence, it may be said that there is no reason to suppose that Bacon was the author of the Plays, while there is every reason to believe that he was not; and with respect to Shakespeare, there is no reason to believe he was not what he claimed to be, and there is tradition, the testimony of all who had the best means of knowing, to prove that he was.
Until very recent times, one of the most tangible arguments of the Shakespeareans was that Bacon had not claimed the authorship of the Plays. That argument, if it has not now been thrown down, is, at least, suspended. The existence of the bi-literal cipher which Mrs. Gallup preaches, though vigorously attacked, has not yet been exploded. But if the cipher which contains these claims is verified, in the face of all circumstantial evidence that prove the claims to be baseless and preposterous, we are practically convicting Bacon of one of the greatest and most impudent literary frauds that was ever perpetrated. Yet that is what I am prepared to find is the case. Nor am I without warrant for holding this opinion. When the existence of the bi-literal, and the word-cipher has been acknowledged, we shall find that there are four other forms of cipher, the “Capital Letter; Time, or as more oft called, Clocke; Symboll; and Anagrammaticke … which wee have us’d in a few of owr bookes.” These ciphers are now being applied to decipher other messages which Bacon sent down the ages by this secret medium. Of the nature of these claims, I am, at the moment, unable to speak, but I am in a position to say that the contents are more sensational than any that have yet been revealed. The absolute proof of the authorship of the Plays is promised – but again we shall get no more than what Bacon considered constituted proof. In reality, it will form part of a gigantic fraud committed by one of the cleverest men that ever lived, it will disclose the flaw in “the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men;” it will prove, up to the hilt, the madness of Francis Bacon.
